A friend, an anthropologist, once told me that in the future everybody is going to want to watch home movies from the 1960s and 70s because that was the peak of American civilization--the Yellowstone grizzly with its front paws up on the station wagon. It's all been downhill ever since.

I think he's right. I'm from that g-g-generation. I was in the station wagon and there were men on the moon and if there were problems we'd figure them out because this was America, land of the free and home of the brave.

But now the problems keep getting bigger and we can't agree on the causes, let alone the solutions. It seems like we're on the slippery slope to the end of the world as we know it.